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What have you actually built and deployed using this "vibe coding" methodology?

So far, I've mostly seen proof-of-concept applications that might qualify as decent game jam entries - contexts where experimental implementation is expected ("jank allowed").

I'm curious about production applications: Has anyone developed robust, maintainable agent systems using this approach that didn't require significant refactoring or rewrites even?

What's been your experience with its viability in real-world environments beyond prototyping?

2 comments

What software development world do you live in where significant refactoring and rewrites aren’t commonplace? Every project I’ve ever had insider knowledge about started as a prototype and then was extensively reworked until it met the needs of the team…until the next set of requirements dropped and the cycle repeats.

If agent systems allow teams to spin up and test prototypes faster than they previously could do without the agents, isn’t that a useful and valuable step in the right direction?

Addendum: After rereading my comment I realize it may come off as argumentative when it was intended to offer a perspective of not requiring more from the current state of the tech than it offers. “Early days” and all that :)

Is this faster than the CLI project management tools we already have and things like git checkout -b? How?

This particular MCP server? No idea. I suspect it is just a different way, rather than a better way.

For tasks like that I personally use pre- and post-commit scripts to run all of my test validation, coverage, Ruff, etc. and output the results as “Current Code Quality” summary reports that are shared with my agents for context.

Prototypes unfortunately often stick. IMO refactoring someone else's code is less efficient vs whatever code I wrote myself. I'm pondering net productivity.

Have you personally deployed anything based on agent results (predominantly)? I'm just trying to gauge if the current state ("early days") is actually worth investing time and money in from a professional perspective.

In my experience, hype often precedes actual usefulness by a significant margin.

TL;DR are we there yet?

I have an API project in development where the majority of the code has been written through Claude Code. It offers an integration of the Congress.gov and GovInfo.gov APIs, and analysis tools for their respective (somewhat overlapping but not always) public information.

I put significant effort in constructing the product & project requirements beforehand and have built a number of simple tools as I ran into roadblocks or inefficiencies, so I can attest to there being a large amount of hype. I can also comfortably state that without the use of LLMs, I would not be this far along.

Having a background in software development (UX side) and a deep interest in technology gives me some insight in to which questions to ask and when to “throw a flag” and ask the LLM to explain why it’s doing something. I don’t believe the hype around one-shot enterprise applications, but the current state of AI programming is usable if people take the care they hopefully would with their own output.

Cool, thanks for sharing!

Can you clarify what you mean by "agent-based" development, "vibe coding" and "maintainable agent systems" here?

(All three of those are terms with very vague definitions, I'm interested in hearing which of those definitions are starting to take root.)

I like the original construction of “Vibe Coding” [0] that I will attempt to make concise:

Vibe Coding is an RECREATIONAL activity where a user and an AI collaborate on creation of some artifact AND the user accepts ALL feedback and suggestions from the AI.

https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

Yeah, I like that definition too: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/